March 2014

Congrats to Andrew for being selected for the NSF GROW
(Graduate Research Opportunities Worldwide) with USAID
program. Andrew will be spending the summer in Indonesia to
hunt emerging mosquito-borne arboviruses!

Rachel was awarded the #1 Student Poster Award at the 2014
American Association of Veterinary Medical Colleges conference in
March in Alexandria, VA! Rachel's poster was entitled
'Merging ecology and epidemiology to reduce the burden of human and
canine Chagas disease: a One Health approach'. The poster was
a great contribution to this year's meeting, which had the theme of
One Health in Veterinary Medical Education. We are thrilled
that Texas A&M University was well represented at this year's
conference, and that Dean Green was present for Rachel's
presentation.
Photo: Left to right: Dean Eleanor Green, Rachel Curtis, Assistant
Dean Mike Chaddock, and Merrideth Holub.

The Hamer Labs were well represented at this year's Ecological
Integration Symposium, hosted by the Interdisciplinary Program in
Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. Rachel, Andrew, Jaime, and Emily
all delivered awesome oral presentations, and Adrian Castellanos
(Jessica Light's Lab) was awarded yet another #1 Graduate Poster
Presentation Award for his awesome poster on the fire ant - tick -
pathogen project. Way to go, team!!

DVM Summer Research Student Trevor Tenney (summer 2013) had his
manuscript on canine Chagas disease accepted for publication in
Emerging Infectious Diseases! Congrats to Trevor and
coauthors Rachel, Dr. Snowden, and Sarah for our lab's first
peer-reviewed Chagas publication, hopefully followed by many
more.

Congrats to Erica for being accepted to TAMU Vet School!
We're glad you'll be around... hopefully you can keep working with
us!

Emily delivered an awesome oral presentation to the Vector
Biology group entitled 'Using stable isotopes as a marker for
mosquito movement'. Many members of Gabe and Sarah's labs
were present to cheer her on!